- Last September, when President Bush declared his war
on terrorism, I said that you can't kill your way out of a terrorism problem.
I cited the Israelis as an example.
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- Does anyone want to argue with that? Israel is still
wracked with terrorism, despite having reoccupied virtually all of the
West Bank and having killed Palestinians at a prodigious rate. Nor have
we solved our terrorism problem, even though, for the time being, the terrorists
are lying low.
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- I also said in October that American troops would be
in Afghanistan long enough to realize that Afghanistan's summers are as
blazing hot as its winters are cold. That was when everyone was celebrating
the "short" war. Our troops are still there. Moreover, the Bush
Administration doesn't have the foggiest notion of how long they will have
to stay.
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- We are in this mess because the Bush Administration foreign
policy is based on lies. It is based on lies in order to avoid the politically
incorrect truth that our problem with terrorism is solely the result of
our outrageously unjust policy of blind support of Israel. Neither Bush
nor Congress wants to admit this, so they come up with absurd lies that
terrorists are jealous of our freedom and wealth.
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- Really now, do you suppose that a multimillionaire (Osama
bin Laden) who chose to live in caves is jealous of American wealth? That
makes no sense at all. The Zogby organization, which has emerged as one
of the country's most competent polling organizations, recently did extensive
face-to-face interviews with a cross section of people in several Arab
countries. What did Zogby find?
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- It found that people in the Arab countries do not hate
America or Americans or American culture or democracy. They just hate our
foreign policy. As Zogby put it, "It's the policy, stupid."
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- While I could write 10 columns on the injustices of that
policy, one example will suffice: We have inflicted a terrible economic
siege and periodic bombings on Iraq in the name of enforcing United Nations
Security Council resolutions. A former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright,
said on global television that 500,000 dead Iraqi children were "worth
it to enforce the resolutions."
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- At the same time, the state of Israel stands in open,
stick-it-where- the-sun-don't-shine defiance of more than 60 U.N. Security
Council resolutions. It is able to do so because the United States refuses
to allow any enforcement actions to be taken against Israel.
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- You do see the contradiction, do you not? Enforcing U.N.
resolutions against Iraq is OK, even if it means killing half a million
Iraqi children, but no U.N. resolution can be enforced against Israel.
It is not surprising that Arabs do not like that policy. Their dislike
is quite rational and moral.
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- The only thing the Arab world, and indeed the Muslim
world, asks of the United States is simple fairness. Israel's terrorism
problem will never be solved as long as it continues to occupy the West
Bank and Gaza. Instead of pressuring Israel to do the right thing, President
Bush is trying to imitate the Israelis' failed and blood-spattered policy.
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- Get a video of the American film "The Patriot,"
with Mel Gibson. In your own mind, substitute the Palestinians for the
American patriots and the Israelis for the British. You will have a correct
analogy of what is going on in Palestine. Every time the Israelis kill
and maim Palestinian children and commit other injustices, the Palestinian
determination to fight grows 10 times stronger.
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- It is sad indeed that our government rejects the Palestinian
freedom fighters and instead supports the oppressor, Israel. We'll pay
for that stupidity in blood.
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- [Copyright 2002 King Features Syndicate, Inc.]
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- Zogby International
- http://www.zogby.com
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- Publisher: King Features Syndicate
- http://reese.king-online.com
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020809
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